(Note: This is a prime example of not mentioning the fact that the
water tanks installed by ranchers have benefited wildlife, and that
there were more wildlife in the Mojave when it was ranched than there is
now. The turtles find moisture and shelter under the cattle droppings.
If the agenda were truly about 'habitat,' the ranchers would be
embraced, not besieged.)

He lost his favorite horse to a bite from the deadly Mojave green
rattlesnake.

Now, he must decide whether to sell the ranch that has been in his
family for generations or to stay and run the risk of financial ruin.

At 76, with white hair and a slight hitch in his gait from a hip
replacement, Blair is old enough to recall the last gunfight in the
Mojave and the days when every little Southern Pacific Railroad town
here had a weekly square dance.

He watched the two-room Essex Elementary School, 23 miles away,
shrink from more than 30 pupils to just four, two of whom are his own
grandchildren.

Arriving in the 1880s, the Blairs were among the first ranching
families here. Now, they are the last.

When the sale of a neighbor's federal grazing rights becomes final
later this month, Blair and his son Rob, 45, co-owners of the Blair 7IL
Ranch, will be the only working cattlemen in the 1.6-million-acre Mojave
National Preserve.

Where 20,000 cattle once roamed a range the size of Delaware, there
are now only the Blairs' 400 cows, 25 bulls and perhaps 350 calves left
in the preserve.

Though the Blairs hang on for now, they are vulnerable to the same
pressures that prompted their neighbors to sell out. Like many Western
ranchers, the Blairs own the grazing rights to the land that most of
their cattle use. But the land itself belongs to the federal government.

A federal court decision to protect the desert tortoise, an
endangered species that lives only in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts,
threatens the Blairs' future in a way drought or natural calamity never
has.

The court ruling, handed down in the summer of 2001, sharply
curtailed grazing on federal land just outside the preserve.

Now, the environmental groups that filed the first suit have
announced their intent to challenge grazing within the preserve. If the
groups prevail again, the Blairs could be ordered to remove their
cattle.

The family can offer the ranch for sale now to a conservation group
that would remove the cows and manage it in the best interests of desert
wildlife.

Or, they can hope that a judge will rule in their favor.

Amid all the uncertainty, difficult questions loom over the Blair
household.

Will the April roundup be the ranch's last? Will this be the last
trip for the horses to the sweet grasses in the high pasture? Will there
be another family reunion in the shade of Howard Blair's fruit trees?

"We've been praying about it a lot lately," said Kate
Blair, Rob's wife and mother of their three children. "Frankly,
there's a lot of things that are way beyond our control." Kate, 41,
is a UC Santa Barbara graduate with a geology degree who works on a
National Park Service maintenance crew, cleaning outhouses and
campgrounds, so the family can have health insurance.

"With these people holding the Endangered Species Act over our
heads, we know we are going to have to go," Howard Blair said,
sitting in the dim light of his living room as a cowboy movie flickered
on the TV. "We just don't know when. Whether it is 10 years or next
year, we don't know."

On the television screen, actor Tom Selleck, on horseback, looking as
though he had just emerged from the tanning salon of a Beverly Hills
health club, pronounced defiantly, as if on cue, "As long as there
is one cowboy left, it ain't over."

The Blairs are among the last holdouts in a disappearing breed of
high-desert cowboys scattered across the American West. Their way of
ranching is more difficult than in many other places because there is
less rainfall and less grass. In the central Texas hill country, for
example, a cow and her calf can survive on two acres of grassland; in
the cattle-raising areas of Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, they require
only one acre.

In the Mojave, it takes at least 300 acres to support a cow and calf.
Where the sparse grass is thinnest, it requires up to 3,000 acres.
Riding herd demands long hours, skilled horsemanship and a wealth of
natural savvy. "Sometimes we go two to three years without finding
some of them," said Howard Blair. All-terrain vehicles, which have
replaced horses on many ranches, don't work here -- the land is too
rough and uneven, the cattle too skittish.

The complexity of ranching here is evident from the list of ranch
assets Rob Blair keeps on a blackboard in his workshop. Spread over the
ranch's 210,000 acres are 45 water tanks, 24 corrals, 23 windmills, 37
natural springs, 96 miles of fence and 62 miles of plastic water
pipeline. All of them require regular maintenance. If a windmill breaks
down or a water line ruptures, a tank that supplies a hundred head of
cattle can go dry. Even in his 70s, hobbled by a bum hip, Howard Blair
still regularly climbs 20 feet to the top of ranch windmills, dodging
spinning blades as he wrestles with bent and broken iron pump rods.

Despite the unceasing work and marginal profits, there is a loyalty
to the land that sometimes defies reason. By any sane measure of land
use, biologists argue, this should not be cattle country. It's too arid.

Tucked in the horseshoe-shaped Whisky Basin, the Blair 7IL is six
miles from the nearest paved road, 62 miles from Needles, the nearest
town of any size.

The ranch consists of two modest one-story wood-frame houses where
the Blairs live and a collection of solar panels, generators, camper
trailers, a maintenance barn, tack shed and a dozen pickup trucks of
assorted vintage nestled next to an abandoned silver mill.

In a good year, the ranch might gross $100,000, out of which the
Blairs must pay grazing fees, buy new equipment and parts, purchase
supplemental feed and veterinary supplies and pay for fuel.

Each of the adult Blairs supplements the ranch income with other
work. Howard and Rob operate road graders and backhoes for neighbors.
Rob sells handmade saddles.

Until recently, the Blairs had reason to feel secure here.

Nine years ago, when the Mojave National Preserve was created under
the Desert Protection Act, the Blairs thought they had won the right to
ranch here "in perpetuity" thanks to a special provision in
the bill written with them in mind by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The special Blair-Feinstein connection dates from 1993, when the
senator, researching the desert bill, visited the 7IL ranch by
helicopter and became instantly, fiercely attached to the Blairs.

A Sympathetic Senator

"I'm basically a city girl," Feinstein said in a recent
interview. "Here was this young couple, Rob and Kate, with three
young children living in a way that runs contrary to all the television
sitcoms that emphasize the goofy side of America. I saw clearly the
value and the pride of their way of life. Howard showed me something
inside one wall that had been written by his great-grandfather. So when
we drafted the bill for the preserve we did it so grazing could continue
at the same level it had before."

"Me and her are different in politics," Howard Blair said
of Feinstein, "but she's been good to us."

Today, Feinstein vows to protect the Blairs "as long as I am
breathing or even after I'm breathing." But her efforts may not be
enough to save the Blair ranch if a judge agrees with the same arguments
against grazing made by environmentalists in the most recent case
involving cattle and endangered species in the Mojave.

That case led to severe restrictions on livestock grazing on most of
the eight ranches still operating in the desert surrounding the Mojave
preserve.

The ruling followed days of testimony from biologists and desert
scholars detailing the devastation wrought on desert tortoise habitat by
grazing animals that stomp on tortoises, crush their burrows and destroy
brush cover needed to protect their young from swooping ravens.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and Public Employees
for Environmental Responsibility -- who brought the first suit in
federal court -- have filed notice to sue the Mojave National Preserve
over the same issues.

Damage to the Mojave can take a long time to heal. Tank tracks from
pre-World War II maneuvers conducted by Gen. George S. Patton still scar
the desert floor.

Environmentalists say a host of animals have been harmed by grazing
-- among them the Mojave ground squirrel, spotted bat, yellow-blotched
salamander and yellow-eared pocket mouse. Grazing, they argue, also has
introduced dozens of nonnative plants and is crowding out 29 native
plant species.

The Blairs dispute the evidence, contending, for example, that cattle
steer clear of tortoises. "They can't stand the smell," Howard
said. "If a cow smells a tortoise, she'll make a big effort to
circle around it."

As the environmental pressure mounts, an ambitious program by Mojave
preserve Supt. Mary Martin has successfully retired all the working
ranches in the preserve, except the 7IL. Martin has found nonprofit
groups willing to pay up to $10 million for property near the Blairs and
says she knows of buyers interested in their ranch.

Rob Blair, who sits with Martin on the Mojave preserve advisory
council, is suspicious of the superintendent's motives. "Mary
Martin would like us to leave," he blurted during a drive to the
ranch headquarters. "It would be a feather in her cap if she drove
every rancher out of the park."

The Blairs own barely 1,000 acres, a fraction of the land their cows
use.

For the privilege of running their stock on preserve land, the
ranchers pay $1.35 a month for every cow-calf pair. In the Blairs' case
that amounts to about $6,000 a year for the grazing rights to 210,000
acres.

Forgotten in that equation, environmentalists contend, is that this
is all public land, not the private domain of the ranchers. They say the
price paid for grazing is much too little to compensate for the damage
done to the desert.

A hundred miles away in her Barstow office, Martin denied putting any
pressure on the Blairs to sell. "The decision to sell is
theirs," she said. "If they say they want to stay, they have
the choice."

But Martin said that if she were in the Blairs' place, she would
probably sell out and use the money to buy private land somewhere else.

"It's hard not to look around the desert and see what has
happened to other folks. On the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] land
where the grazing was stopped," Martin said, "there was no
compensation at all."

Even some of the environmentalists who have pushed for an end to
livestock grazing across the Mojave have a soft spot for the Blair
family.

"These are good people. There may be some middle ground,"
said Elden Hughes, who chairs the Sierra Club's California/Nevada Desert
Committee.

Hughes, who grew up on a ranch near Whittier, still sees a role for
the Blair ranch as a kind of living museum, with the Blairs acting as
resident "historian interpreters." He believes some of the
herd could be kept as a kind of historical display.

As their fellow ranchers sell out, the Blairs have looked on in
frustration. "What kind of price are you going to put on this
lifestyle?" asked Rob Blair.

Judging by the prices obtained by other ranchers, the family might be
able to demand $3 million to $4 million for their holdings. Their fear
is that the pending federal lawsuit, if successful, could drop the
market value of the ranch to almost nothing.

Over a family dinner one recent evening, Rob Blair summarized their
predicament:

"These kids are the fifth generation," he said, pointing to
his three freckle-faced offspring. "This is our home and nobody
wants to leave. But we all agree that if they are going to run us out,
it's better to leave with something than empty-handed."

Clear Skies and Coyotes

With their future in limbo, even the most ordinary tasks take on
special meaning.

Rising with the dawn, drinking bitter instant coffee and grilling
bacon in his cluttered kitchen, Howard Blair said he never tires of the
great symphonic beauty of the desert -- the starry night skies and the
cry of the coyotes.

"Well, I guess I'll say grace then," Howard said softly
over a stack of griddlecakes. "Heavenly Father, thank you for this
beautiful day. Thank you for the safe journey home last night. Thank you
for watching over us."

Driving home later, after taking some horses to a high pasture, Rob
Blair recalled a poem he first heard recited by John Wayne.

"I think it fits our situation," he said.

With that, the rangy 6-foot-3 onetime Needles High School football
star broke into verse.

The poem describes a pair of Mexican horsemen coming upon what looks
like a deserted ranch. When they near the ranch the riders are surprised
to see an old caballero appear in the doorway. Asked why he is still
living in the abandoned ranch, the old man replies "mis raices
estan aqui." (My roots are here.) The Spanish refrain repeats
several times in the poem.

Back at the ranch, Blair produced a book of his own poems he said he
had composed while riding. One of them, titled "The Range of
Time," reflects the Blairs' current frame of mind.

There's a group of men that are going extinct

We were raised upon the range

When today's society looks back at us

They think we're kind of strange

They tried to put us in a story book

Because they say times have changed

And there's a modern way of doing things -- and we need your open
range.